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Ilkay Özkisaoglu

Since 04/2021 229 Episoden

#218 Inside KARL MAYER TIC: Full Textile Innovation Centre Tour Warp Knitting to Warp Prep

20.05.2026 41 min Staffel 5 Episode 176

Zusammenfassung & Show Notes

What does a full-scale textile innovation environment look like—from yarn preparation to finished applications?

In this episode of #Composites360onTour, Ilkay Özkisaoglu (Thought Leader in Advanced Materials & Co Founder of Composites Lounge) conducts a complete engineering walkthrough of the KARL MAYER Textile Innovation Centre (TIC) in Obertshausen, Germany, recorded during the Grand Opening on April 21, 2026.
This is not a showroom visit.
This is real industrial textile production with full process transparency.

🧵 Warp Knitting: Speed, Precision, Versatility
The tour begins with KARL MAYER’s HKS tricot machines:
• HKS 3-M EL PLUS (E14) → coarse gauge for thick yarns and open structures (footwear, medical, technical textiles)
• HKS 2-SE (E40, 4100 rpm) → fine gauge elastic fabrics (sportswear, swimwear)
• HKS 3-M EL (186", E28) → versatile applications including automotive roof linings
• HKS 4-M EL → extended pattern capabilities for furniture and technical fabrics
Key insight:
👉 Operators validate quality at low speed (“turtle”) before switching to production mode (“rabbit”).

🧶 Raschel Technology: Pattern & Function
The second part covers Raschel machines:
• MJ 92/1 F (Jacquard) → lace structures with post-processing (clipping yarns)
• RS 2 NET → net production for agriculture and sports
o integrated film-to-yarn conversion (FTL aggregate)
o machine produces its own yarn from raw film
• TM 4-TS EL (210") → terry towel production with brushing for loop formation
Key innovation:
👉 Direct transformation from raw material to final product within one system.

🏭 Inspiration Hub & Applications
The TIC integrates engineering with application:
• Textile archive with up to 100 years of developments
• Pattern cards including machine parameters
• Applications across:
o workwear
o medical
o defense
o fashion
Engineers can: 👉 reverse-engineer fabrics
👉 reduce development risk using proven setups

⚙️ Warp Preparation: Where Quality Begins
With Tobias Kraus, the focus shifts to warp preparation:
• Creel systems with up to 2000 packages
• PROWARP HT sectional warping
o width: 3600 mm
o speed: up to 1000 m/min
Critical controls:
• FILGUARD monitoring → stops machine immediately on yarn break
• Uniform yarn tension across all ends
• Controlled beam build-up
Advanced system:
• MULTIMATIC 128
o 128 yarn guides for color and pattern flexibility
Core takeaway:
👉 Every fabric quality is defined in warp preparation.

📍 Why This Episode Matters
The TIC provides a complete textile value chain in one place:
• yarn preparation
• fabric formation
• application validation
For textile engineers and operators, this means: 👉 real machine insight
👉 process understanding
👉 quality control visibility

🎙️ Featuring
• Ilkay Özkisaoglu (Composites Lounge)
• Melanie Bergmann (KARL MAYER)
• Tobias Kraus (Warp Preparation Expert)

🔜 Up Next
A second episode will focus on technical textiles and composite applications.

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Transkript

We believe in the value of textiles. So this is the motto of Karl Mayer, the Textile Innovation Center. Welcome to our coverage of the Textile Innovation Center. Grand opening in Obertshausen, Hessen, Germany. So today I will be speaking to a few experts in the technical textile machinery. We are talking about Raschel machines. We are talking about medical textiles, filtration, textiles, a whole bunch of defense applications and geo textiles. And if you are in the textile industry, technical textiles in particular, then this show is for you. So in our first stop now is with Melanie Bergmann. And she's the senior manager Textile Innovation, which is, of course, here in a textile innovation centre. A good programme right now. So Melanie will bring us more closer to the machines that Karl Mayer has in general. So we are not talking only about the technical textiles, whereas some machines obviously are okay with technical textiles. And I asked Melanie to be part of my show. Thank you so much. You're welcome! -To show us about the beautiful machines here at the Textile Innovation Centre. So Melanie, my first question is how passionate are you about textiles? -150% 150% a 15 out of ten. It's more than ten of ten. Of course. -If you don't mind, how does it come? Your passion for textiles. -Um, it started early when I was a teenager. I started, like, sewing, like small bags and stuff for friends. -Really? I'm not kidding. Then after I finished school, I learned to be a tailor, actually. And then I went on studying textile technology, and I finished the university as a textile engineer. And now I'm here. So I'm 100% textile, 100% textiles. And which university, if I may ask? It was the University of Reutlingen. -Reutlingen. Okay. Very famous for textiles. -Yes, Okay, let's dive into this. Give us before we start walking around here. And an overview about the divisions of Karl Mayer and maybe the portfolio of different machines you are having. Okay, so, yeah, also from my side, welcome to the Textile Innovation Center. Basically we are split up in three units. So we have the units of the warp knitting machines. We have the unit of the technical textiles and the unit of the warp preparation. And now we are here in the first unit, the unit of warp knitting. So I show you now a round of all the machines that are belonging to this business unit. And basically we can split up these machine types in two types of machines. On the one hand we have the trikot machines. They are the high performance machines. The fabrics are, I would say very basic with just small hole holes and not that much of patterning. But the machine has a very, very high output. And then the other technology is the raschel technology. And there we are slower in machine speed. We do not have that much of output, but a whole wide range of pattern possibilities like layers and big holes and yes. -So okay, while you walk us through your machines, if I may ask you for some kind of applications, typical applications that come to your mind, I think that would be interesting for our community. Sure. We start right here next to me. We have the HKS 3-M EL PLUS machine. It's a three bar tricot machine, and it's a bit of a special type of this machine because in this machine we have the gauge E14. That means we have 14 needles per inch. And for a tricot machine, it's a pretty coarse gauge. But this is exactly which makes the plus in the machine. And we have the possibility to work with very thick yarns in this machine. And we also have the possibility to do for trick or machine pretty open structure in the fabric. So here for example we now have a shoe fabric shoe upper. Um very typical application for this machine. Um, you would also find end applications for this machine, for example in the medical field or the technical textiles field. We have been to Wertheim village yesterday, and I saw a lot of Nike and Adidas shoes with that topping. Is that that topping? Okay. Right now we are here in front of the HKS 2-SE. It's a two bar tricot machine and it's a typical machine for elastic Applications. So we have one bar that is with filament yarn and one bar with a spandex yarn. And the fabric that we see here is a shamus we call it. It's a very typical lapping for this machine. And this fabric is used mostly in sports textiles like for example, leggings or shirts, but also for swimsuits and bikinis. It's the typical application. Yeah, we have here. The machine has a width of 130 inch and the gauge is gauge E40. So quite the opposite of what we have seen before. Um, very fine gauge. And this machine here in this hall is the fastest machine. It runs up to 4100 runs per minute. So we are now moving over to the HKS three ML plus again. But this time we have a wider version of the machine. It's 186in wide and it has the gauge E28, which is for a trick or like a treble trick or machine. It's a very typical standard gauge, so this machine is capable of doing a lot of different end applications. We see it for fashion, we see it for home textiles also a bit in the more technical direction, like for example automotive interior. Today we are showing two different fabrics. So here you see it's quite transparent. And when you look closer to the fabric you see that it's a net structure with a square holes. And this structure is used as a mosquito net. And on the upper half of the machine you see a bit of the next pattern. That is you can't see through it anymore. And this is a flag fabric. So it is used as a printing ground structure for advertising purposes. For example. Can you go a bit deeper on the automotive that catched. Of course, my attention. Yeah. Do you have any automotive? The seating, the roof, or what is it? -So the roof. The ceiling is a very, very typical application for this machine. And is it visible or is it, in the layer construction. The visible part. -Visible part. So if you look up in a car at the ceiling, you could buy like 90%, 95%. You could say that this is warp knitted. Okay. And sometimes you have a dark roof a black roof. Yeah. Um, is that the same or is it done just dyed black. It is the same. And for these very dark fabrics, normally they use, uh, spun dyed yarn. So they already go with a black yarn onto the machine and then produce the fabric. So it's two layers. -No, it's just one layer. One layer. -One layer. Yeah. -So now we are moving over to our HKS 4-M EL. It is a four part tricot machine with an EL drive. And by this it is the most flexible tricot machine that we have in our portfolio on a four bar machine. The pattern possibilities are even bigger than on a three bar machine. So we also have fashion. We have home textiles. You can do footwear, you have technical applications. So it's almost no borders in the in the variety of end applications. We are now showing a furniture fabric. So this fabric is very typical in the last years for uh pillows for example, for the blankets or the blanket on the couch fabric. So on the machine, you see that the fabric is still pretty flat, but in the finishing, the yarns on the surface will be cut in the middle. And then you have that really three dimensional velvet like touch of the fabric. It looks really cool. See also these slippers here are really nice. So on the slippers it's basically this edge here. Yes, this is like a smaller version of the pattern, but also the green part. Also the green. This machine. Okay then. -Then the green part is like a rose. And it's basically when you touch it. Okay. Of course it's soft, but also you don't feel much of a interruption here. So it's more an optical design. Nice, this is really. Soft. Really soft. -Very soft. Yeah, it's a really good one. -Cool. So this is basically one of your customers size 40 to 41. It says Karl Mayer here. You have anonymized it here, and it's 100% polyester. Tell me what stands the latest HKS now for? Uh, I've seen it on all machines. HKS stands for. Yes. So it is German and it stands for. which translated in English, is like high speed tricot machine. -High speed tricot machine, which means there is also low speed tricot machines. Actually no one. -No, I'm asking, I'm asking because on the other machine that Jürgen showed me, you have. Turtle. -The turtle. The sign of the turtle. -Which is slow. And then you got the plane, which is fast speed. Exactly. We have it, actually. You can see it over here. Also here. Okay. You got. -That machine. On every machine. -Yes. So it means, obviously the turtle has the low speed when it's walking and the rabbit has the high speed. And, um, when we, for example, change the pattern on the machine, we do not, on the first run, press the high speed button, because if there might have been fault in the change of the pattern, for example, and then we would destroy the yarn. -So you start with the turtle first. Slow the turtle -And once you see the quality seems all right. Then you go on the jet. That's cool. That's smart. -And then if you go to production mode and all the settings are done, of course you would immediately press the rabbit. -So this is the wrong shoe size. So I leave it back into the display. -Yes. Because I really like them. They're yours. Okay. Right. So this is the first line. So how would you sum up the first line that we've seen here? -I would say it is a very good variety of different machine types with which we can do almost every end application. And actually, that was exactly the sense behind choosing exactly these machines. -Okay. Now we will go to the next line. What do we see there. -We see. As I said before, the machines from Tricot are ending now. And now we see the machines from Raschel technology. -Okay, let's go to Raschel. Thank you. Okay, so as I said, we changed to the Raschel side. This is a lace machine. It's called MJ 92/1 F and staying with the name the one and the F means that we have one jaquard bar and it's in the front. That's because it has the F, and this machine is doing the lace fabric as we can see it here. The end applications for this are mostly in the, the area of fashion or intimate apparel. So if we look closer to the fabric now. You see there is the nice pattern here. And then you see those long yarns running in between the patterns. And these yarns. They're just on the surface of the fabric. And in a separate finishing process, those yarn will be cut out and then the fabric is in its nice pattern and finished. Yes. This is the finished pattern from this machine. Here you still see the yards? They haven't been clipped yet. And in the next one, you see the yarns have been clipped. And what do you mean by clipped? So the edges. Are. No. These yarns that are -standing out here. Okay. There are some yarns standing out here. But you call it clip. -And this is the clean one. Yes, exactly. Trailer: This is #composites360ontour. Your fastlane access to the global composites community. From factory floors to breakthrough labs, from startup powerhouses to industry leaders, we capture the people, the processes and the ideas shaping the next generation of advanced materials where innovation meets real world applications. We bring you the voices that define the future directly, authentically, and live from the heart of every major composites event in 2026 and 2027 #Composites360onTour continues its journey across Europe, bringing you closer to the people and breakthroughs shaping our industry. At JEC Forum 2026, in Cologne, we reconnect with the German speaking composites ecosystem innovations, SMEs, supplies, buyers and industry leaders driving high performance, lightweight solutions at JEC World 2027. In Paris, we step onto the global stage, capturing world class technologies, international collaborations and the future of composites at the industry's biggest gathering and at JEC Forum Italy 2027, we dive into a market rich in craftsmanship, innovation, performance engineering and sustainable solutions shaped by Italy's industrial heritage. Ilkay Özkisaoglu, Creating Sustainable Value with #composites360ontour weekly on LinkedIn, YouTube and your preferred audio podcast app. -Here we are in the technology of the Raschel special machines. And this actually is a very special machine. It is a net machine. It's called RS 2 NET and it does shadow nets, for example, for the agriculture area. But also on a tennis court, you sometimes have those shadow nets to keep you from the sun. Oh, that's the reason why it's so nice green. This is the the tennis court. -Yeah. Okay. Let me get this a bit closer. So this is the finished net and this is on the machine. This is like a "Jagdgrün". Exactly. Yes. And when we look behind the machine, we see what actually is the very special part of the machine. And so those two machines you see behind, we call them FTL aggregate and. FTL stands for? -Um, volume ten. I'm not sure. Linie? -Yeah, maybe. For separation line. Yeah. -Like that. So you see down there, you see the foil, the green foil. You get the balls like this, and then the foil is brought into the machine and cut into those small yarn foils. -That we see on the top. Here. Yes. -And then when feeding the weaving machine. -Exactly. The warp knitting machine. That. -Is the warp knitting machine. So let's see the fronts. -So those go here inside. So you kind of could say that this machine is producing its own yarn. This machine is producing its own yarn. Basically, from a raw producing a raw material to a substrate. Or is this basically a final product? Can they use it on the court already like this? Yes. -Okay. So it's a final product even. it's not a substrate, it's a final product. Cool. And sometimes they need to do markings on this like white markings and things like that. -Might be a yes, but I am not too deep and. Not into textural. Topics to be honest. All right. -Okay, so now we're moving to another room. So the last machine that I'm showing you now is the TM 4-TS EL. It's also based on the TrickBot technology, but it's actually a very special machine because it's capable to do a Terry towels for, like, toweling or for the bathrobes. And this machine is so far the only machine that we have running with cotton. And as you can see, the cotton yarn is running in here. You produce the fabric first and the fabric still is very flat. And then the fabric runs here through this part. Its a brushing device. And now you see when the fabric comes out brushed, you have the typical soft cherry loop character. Okay, where is the brushing device? -It is down here. So. -Oh okay. This is covered here by the machine. -Yeah. And then it comes out here again. All right. So TM do we know what TM stands for? It stands for tricot machine. -Tricot machine okay. That makes sense. This is huge. -Yes it has 210 inches. It's one of the wider machines. So Melanie tell me about the engineers that are constructing these machines. What is are your philosophy engineering guidelines? When they build a machine, design a machine, what what guidelines do they have? So I think as the same as I am, many of them are driven by passion. Most of our engineers have been working here for many, many years, sometimes more than 20 or 30 years. And every day they try to bring the best out of our technology and keep our technology moving forward. -Yeah, and if an engineer starts new with you guys, what values would you implement in the engineers? What values should they respect? With the Karl Mayer brand. Yeah. -Um, so they should respect that. Um, from the first day on, we always, uh, caring about that. We do the best for our customers and try to help them bringing their business forward. So I think we should always stick back to that thought. -Excellent. Okay, so now we are in our Inspiration hub, and here on the one side we store all the textiles that we have been producing. So on the back you see our archive there. We keep like our textile. Um, yeah. Developments that we have been doing for almost 100 years. And in the front you see the storage for the fabric rolls, I would say there from the last 30, maybe 40 years. Um, so still a long time. Then we have here our working area. We, we cut the fabric and bring it onto pattern cards with some machine information, which we give out to our customers and brands and everyone who is interested to to show the possibility of what our technology can do and like. This is the heart of the Inspiration Hub. Here we have the pattern cards of the last, I would say around about 20 years, and we invite our customers to look around to take their time to get inspired to find new ideas here. So you see, in every of these boxes we have the pattern card where you have the fabric that we developed, and on the back side we have the information of the machine. Now we are in our showroom, which is like the heart of our textile innovation center, because here we show the end applications from all of our um, yeah, application groups. We have fashion and apparel, we have footwear, we have the sports textiles, the technical textiles and the home textiles and of course a part of our business unit war preparation. And here in the front, this is our trends and inspirations area where we try to keep the topics from, for example, current trade fairs. And from today on there is the Tech Textile Fair in Frankfurt. So pretty close to here. And amongst others they have the topic of the workwear. So we also want to show what workwear is possible in web knitting. So for example here we start with the very business workwear, the suits, the shirts. We have some trousers here. And the advantage in web knitting is that the fabrics are pretty elastic. So pretty comfortable but still looking very elegant. So if there is a business person traveling a lot, for example, they can use the suit They always feel comfortable, but still the fabric. -Stays. This elastic here. -Yeah. After sitting a long time. Yes. -Very nice. Yes. It looks elegant. That's right. -And then workwear leads on. Of course. Um, to safety. Uh, fashion. So for example, here we have a suit for beekeepers. So it protects the body from the stitches of the bees. And also some very typical things like the, the vest in a color that can be seen by everyone. And here we have a suit that protects you from getting injured by a chainsaw. So we have the warpaint part here. And this part cannot be destroyed by a chainsaw. -Mhm. It will basically go inside these. -Yeah, the chain will like it. Get stuck in this textiles. -Exactly. Because there's a resistance for a saw. -Exactly. Yeah. -So we can also find the warp knitting fabrics in the medical sector we have here. Um, the suit that the medical people in the hospital are wearing. And also we have the nets for the head. We also know them for the kit from the kitchen area, for example. And also we have here. It's like the slip, the medical slip that you wear after an operation, for example. And last but not least, um. The area of the workwear goes on until the defence area, for example, we have here some underwear with different elastic zones. Um, that gives the body of the protection and also the comfort comfortability that it needs. And we have here the bulletproof vest that has also a warm knitted pad inside that protects the body from the bullets. So here we are in the area of war preparation, and we are showing a lot of end application pieces here as well. But actually it's not the fabric that has been done on our machines. It is even more the yarn that where the fabric is produced from that we are preparing on our machines. So in our preparation, we bring a lot of single yarns from bobbins onto one big beam. And this big beam is then used for weaving or for warp knitting to produce the fabric. So Melanie, tell us about the warp preparation. Karl Mayer is very popular and famous for this. Why is Karl Mayer so specialized in wall preparation. Because we need the war preparation either for our own machines, because we have to have the big beams with all the yarns being in parallel next to each other, and all of them have to have the same tension and the same kind of beams, but just bigger. We also need them in the weaving technology, and I think we are so popular because on our machines we have the capability to do high precision beams with. So every single yarn has the same tension. And because the quality of these beams is so high, I think this is why our machines are so popular. Okay. Thank you. And now I am handing. -Over to. Tobias Kraus, the expert in war preparation. Hello and welcome. Also from my side, I want to give you a short introduction about warp preparation. Everything starts here with our grills. All the bobbins are placed on the grill. Depending on the size, the discrete can have a size of about 1500 to 2000 packages. From there, all the ends are transferred to our sectional warping machine type prowarp HT, which is a sectional warping machine which is suitable for almost every warp preparation application we can do here. Almost everything from natural fiber, synthetic fibers up to the technical textiles this machine has working with Of 3600mm, a whopping speed of. In total, 1000m per minute. Yeah. Warp preparation, what are we doing? The beams which are produced here on these machines are used on weaving machines as well as on the warp knitting machines. Warp preparation is a really, really important part of the whole textile chain because here begins everything. The single yarns from the creel are placed onto the beam where the textile fabric is made from. So now I want to show you the machine running, I start now. So, Tobias, if one fibre breaks. Yes. Now, there are so many fibres on this. Maybe we can go to the other display. Yes. Now we have in total 320 ends. Running every end is monitored here from our yarn pre detector type filguard. When one end is breaking I can show you levels going up. The machine stops immediately. And so it's really easy for our operators to fix the yarn break. So no further damages or problems will occur during the beaming. -Very good. We are now in the fourth of in total 20 sections after all sections have been wound onto the drum. The whole yarn sheep will be transferred to a weaving beam. The weaving. The beaming part is on the side next to the drum, and there all the ends will be wound on the beam, and this beam can be used on the weaving machine. So this is very fast right now. Yes. How do you measure the speed? It's in controlled by the control system. -And its rounds per minute. Or how do you. Meter per minute. -Now the machine per minute. The machine is now running with 400m per minute. So 400m per minute right now. What did you show us before? How many meters? -The 15 meter per minute. Because it was just the engine speed. While the operator is standing in front of the machine during the whole operation. And the maximum speed of this machine is 1000m per minute. -Oh, you can go even higher than this. Okay, so the the initial one was the turtle speed. Correct. Correct. And now you've got the jet speed. But the half jet. You can go double jet. Okay. This looks really impressive, guys. So, Tobias, what is this futuristic style here? This is our Multimatic 128. This is our flagship. In terms of fashion applications, there are almost no limit in terms of sample warpers. Yes. -And this is now turtle speed or jet speed. -This is our jet speed in total. Or the maximum speed of this machine is 800 meter per minute. Okay, wonderful. So you have a lot of colors going on and you say this is for fashion industry. -Correct. Okay. -You can go to the. The other. -Side inside because they're all the action happens. Here we have 128 individual moving yarn guides. Every yarn guide can be equipped with a different type of yarn or a different color, so there are many fold sample possibilities. All right, Tobias, then thank you so much for showing us around on the walk preparation here. Now, I understand you have made your trainee here at Karl Mayer. Yes. What training did you enjoy at Karl Mayer? 18 years ago? I have started my apprenticeship here at Karl Mayer as a mechatronic technician. After my apprenticeship, I had a chance to start as a service technician for a business unit for preparation. I have seen machines everywhere around the world. I met customers, different cultures. It was a really, really exciting time. I made really really or connection to people. It was amazing. And then I had a chance to to move to our R&D department and yeah, here we are. -Here you are at the, in my opinion, most underrated department in the textile industry. The warp preparation. I cannot underline and give the importance of warp preparation to you guys because you get a fabric. You have maybe a textile, maybe a stool, maybe a furniture, maybe a protective cloth. But everything starts here with the war preparation and so much things can go wrong with war preparation. So you should really look into that. And also with Tobias, you see that in the textile industry you can really Work with your passion for mechatronics? Yeah. Mechatronics. Everything is here mechanical but electronical also. So digitalization is very important. Big topic. -I don't know whether AI is already finding its ways. Of course, it's also something. Our target is always to make the operation as easy as possible for our customers. And so AI is a big topic because when the machine is working more or less by itself, then are less. Yeah, chances for any mistakes. And easier to work with it, safer to operate it. And the output will be also correct, hopefully increasing. So thank you so much. One more time to be us. Thank you. And my final question is do you recommend Karl Mayer as an employer? -Yeah, definitely. You see, I, I had a wonderful time. I have a wonderful time here. I made a lot of experience, so of course I could only can recommend it. Thank you so much. So, Melanie, thank you so much for the tour here in the factory. I had also Tobias now in the interview and Tobias, he has made his training even at Karl Meyer and he is very happy. And he gives also to Karl Mayer a recommendation to work here. How about. You? I would as well. -Yes, you would also as well. So it's a great employer also to be with here. Yes, definitely. So thank you also in the name of our community for all these insights here was very, very interesting. The community have a look at Textile Innovation Center. So if someone wants to come here what should he do. Where does he contact you guys. -He can write. An email. -At TIC@karlmayer.com. And then we arrange a meeting and show them our new textile innovation center. So also from my side, thank you very much for for being here for visiting our new Textile Innovation Center. And please always remember, we believe in the value of textiles. We believe in the value of textiles and composites, large size creating sustainable value. So we have the link of value here, both creating value. Melanie. I need to rush now to take. Take still. And I will have a coffee at your booth at Techtextil. Great. -Thank you so. Much. Thank you too. -Okay. Bye bye. Bye bye.